163 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
During the brutal fighting in the Eastern Front, thousands of Soviet children became orphans and wandered into the forests. Many were taken in by partisan units. But the most remarkable story is of Masha Bruskina — a 17-year-old Minsk girl whose phot…
Coastwatchers were Australian civilians and Solomon Islanders behind Japanese lines reporting ship movements and aircraft deployments. They provided crucial warning of Japanese forces at Guadalcanal. Coastwatcher Lt. Reginald Evans maintained a radio…
After the fall of Bataan, Major Macario Peralta organized a guerrilla army of over 30,000 fighters on the island of Panay in the Philippines. His forces kept 8,000 Japanese troops pinned down, recovered downed Allied airmen, and established a complet…
After Heydrich's assassination, the village of Lidice was destroyed — 172 men executed, women sent to Ravensbrück, children sent to Germany. But the Czech resistance's response to this horror was even more courageous than the assassination itself. Wi…
The 1st and 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments of the U.S. Army were composed of Filipino-Americans, many of whom were California farm workers who volunteered after Pearl Harbor. They served as scouts, interpreters, and intelligence specialists in the P…
The Papuan Infantry Battalion was composed of indigenous Papuans serving in the Australian Army. Known as the 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels,' they carried thousands of wounded Australian soldiers down the steep Kokoda Trail on stretchers made from local timber…
After the fall of Bataan, a group of 1,100 Filipino and American soldiers escaped the Death March by slipping through a gap in Japanese lines that a local fisherman had discovered. Led by Lt. Col. Ed Ramsey, they formed a guerrilla force that survive…
Navajo code talkers developed a battle code based on their language that was never broken by enemy forces. Unlike machine-encrypted codes (like the German Enigma which WAS broken), the Navajo code was based on an unwritten language with only about 30…
The 588th Night Bomber Regiment, composed entirely of women pilots, flew over 23,000 sorties during WWII. They flew obsolete wooden Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes — crop-duster designs — and attacked by cutting their engines and gliding to their targets at…
Historian Emanuel Ringelblum led an underground project called Oneg Shabbat — a secret effort to document life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto. Over the course of 1939-1942, Ringelblum and his team collected diaries, reports, drawings, posters, ticket…
When the Japanese cargo ship Lisbon Maru was torpedoed by an American submarine in 1942, the Japanese guards locked the holds containing 1,816 British POWs below deck and covered them with hatch covers. When the Chinese fishing boats of Dongji Island…
While the movie 'Enemy at the Gates' dramatized the sniper duel, the real Vasily Zaitsev trained 28 snipers (including his 11-year-old sister) during the Battle of Stalingrad. He claimed 225 confirmed kills. The famous 'duel' with 'Major Konig' may h…